Today I share with you the top resources and links you can use to change those habits and achieve high levels of success with all of your habits. I also have a 5 day action guide which I want to share with you.
Get your copy by emailing me here.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Hayden Wilson here, Learn Share Grow live and this is Episode 5.

We’ve made it through the first week and I’m doing my best here and I’m hoping that you are learning something from these resources and getting something out of it.

This week has been Habit Week and we’ve learned a ton about how to create habits, how to change bad habits and turn them into good ones.

We also learned what Keystone Habits were and yesterday we went over a short, little plan on exactly what you can do to start changing and implementing different habits within your life.

And today I’m going to show you, up on our trusty board here, we’ve got the resource list. On the fifth day of every week, on the Friday, I do these daily, on the Friday we’re going to be going through the resource list and the action guide so you can actually start getting results in your life by utilising the different parts of the teachings that I’m giving you. So the first thing that you’re going to want to do, is very first up, is buy the book ‘The Power of Habit’.

I’m going to see if I can zoom in here. So that’s my sweet drawing of the book there. I’ve actually got the real book for those watching and that is ‘The Power of Habit’. There’s another cover which is a yellow one which you can see on my resource guide.

Basically this book has provided most of my content for this module and Charles Duhigg is unbelievable, the depth that he has gone to, a great researcher and even better writer. So thank you Charles for writing that. I strongly urge everyone to pick up the book, head over to haydenwilson.com.au/habitbook and you’ll be able to pick that book up, straight from Amazon, straight to your Kindle or jump over to booktopia.com.au and pick it up – one of the best books that you’ll ever read.

The second thing that I need you to do, is watch these videos on YouTube. The first one ‘Charles Duhigg - The Power of Habit’. It goes for about 15 minutes.

The second one is ‘Judson Brewer - A Simple Way to Break a Habit’.

These are all free resources so I’m sure you are going to enjoy them.

Powerful stuff, all about habits, habit creation, and the inner workings, and the psychology behind it.

The next thing you’re going to do is visit Charles’ website which is charlesduhigg.com and he’s got a ton of different resources, action guides, worksheets that you can go through, straight from the source. So I definitely recommend checking that out, he’s got a couple of different papers that you might like to read and look into.

And the last thing that I want you to look into is a 5 day action guide that I’ve created. So all that you see on this board if you’re watching this, or if you’re listening, you’ll be able to download this from haydenwilson.com.au/lsg.

But what I’ve done, is I’ve created an action plan so you can get super clear on what habits you’re doing wrong and start implementing and learning the good habits. I want you to commit to 5 days, that’s all you need to do.

Once you do that, once you can start to build up those habits, you’ll get the momentum and from that momentum, you’ll start winning. So basically, I want to share with you a few resources and guidelines on how to actually complete this. So if I just zoom in, now we’re getting real hi-tech, this first page goes over everything that I’ve just shown you on the board.

You know, it’s got different habits on there that you might like to change. Maybe you might like to start making your bed in the morning which is one of our Keystone Habits, or maybe you want to start going for a run, maybe you want to volunteer more.

There’s so many good habits that you need to be installing into your life. Switching out the smoking and the binge eating and the crap that you just don’t want to do, we all know what it is, get rid of it, it’s toxic. We need to start bringing in good habits.

So then you’ll get to the 5 step action guide. It goes for 5 days and there are 5 steps.

The first one is the routine identification, so we need to work out exactly what it is we’d like to change, whether that be smoking, whether that be drinking, or start exercising and stop being lazy on the couch.

The second step is we’re going to work out the driving forces behind the change. Why do we actually do that. We need to work out in our heads and start to make that transition. Why are we even exhibiting that behaviour? Are we lazy? And this will start to identify the next step which is the reward identification. And for that I’m going to get you to write down 5 potential rewards that you might like to implement in place, as the reward, for doing the routine.

If you’ll remember when we first started this week to create habits and the whole habit loop with a cue which gets you moving, the actual routine which is the activity and then the reward, which is why you do it.

So I want you to write down 5 potential things that you might think could reward you for participating in a specific behaviour. The second last thing I need you to do is the cue identification. So every that this comes up, and this is where the 5 day part comes into it. Every time that this comes up, I want you to fill in this worksheet that I’ve created. It’s basically going to really help you get clear on why you are having these feelings.

The first thing is, I need you to name the 3 emotions at the exact time that this urge comes across you. Then I want you to write down the time, the location, your emotional state, who else is around, whether you’re alone or with other people, and what were you doing immediately before the urge. Were you at the photocopier making some copies, or were you browsing Facebook, or were you looking at a hungryhaydo video and it made you super hungry which is quite common.

I want you to do that for 5 days.

Once you’ve done that, and you must do those 4 steps beforehand, otherwise the rest of the stuff is just not going to work.

The last thing I want you to do is start to create your plan.

Creating a plan, even though it’s the most essential, you’ve got to do the stuff beforehand for it to even work.

So when you’re creating this plan it’s going to help you forward think and when the crisis does happen and you want to reach for those lollies, or you want to go sit down on the couch after work, or you want to press the snooze button, having that plan will remind yourself why you’re actually doing it and you can start building around that. So what I’ve done is provided a couple of examples here and I’ll read them out.

These might work for you, or you can create your own based on your cue, routine and reward. At 8pm each night, after I’ve completed my 5 necessary tasks for the day, I’ll allow myself 40 minutes of social time or a couple of episodes of my favourite TV show.

This is my reward for working hard all day and justification, I don’t need anything else, this is what I reward myself with for working hard during the day. Another example I have is at 9am each morning, after I’ve written 1,000 words which would be one of my critical tasks being a writer, I will allow myself to head down to the cafe and enjoy a coffee.

These are just simple things and these are just my examples. I want you to start thinking about, and filling in the worksheets to identify what your good habits and bad habits might be and start culminating them and, you know, play the orchestra – I’m moving my hands a lot, that’s why I said that. Basically though, just to sum it up, awesome week, thank you for your support.

It’s unbelievable how many people have been messaging me and showing their positive support for what I’m doing, in helping to teach people, so I really appreciate that.

Buy the book, watch the YouTube videos that are in that download sheet, go to Charles’ website and look at the action guide.

It’s all going to be available, I have a link down below, or to the side – I’ll have a link and you can download that – that’ll be available later today, or if you’re watching this in the future, the link will be right there. So thank you for your support. Next week we are going to be learning a whole new topic.

This is Learn Share Grow with Hayden Wilson.

If you have any questions, jump over to the chat box now and ask, otherwise I’ll catch you all next week.

Today I am going through a key strategy you can implement immediately to start taking control of your habits and start to achieve real success in your life.
This is a great episode to follow along with a pen in hand and focus on the screen.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome. Yes, we’re doing a bit of hi-tech today and we’ve got the whiteboard and we have a microphone – we’re all ready to rock.

This is Episode 4 of Learn Share Grow with Hayden Wilson and yes, high budget here in my living room but this is what happens.

So thank you for joining me and basically today we’re going to go over (I’m not 100% sure if you can see this, we’re going to zoom in a little bit).

But basically, what we’re going to go over (as I switch the camera around) basically what we’re going to go over today is how to change those habits and this is a really practical guide for those who want to start identifying what they’re actually doing and instead of their brain being on auto commit and just going through the motions of habit.

And what we’ve found is with a habit there’s basically 4 different parts to it. Sorry, to change the habit there is 4 different parts.

Basically what we find is if you can identify the routine, experiment with the rewards, isolate the cue and then create a plan around that we can start to change all the habits that have already naturally been installed into our lives.

So if you recall from the first Episode, you’ve got the cue, the routine and the reward, that habit loop, what we need to do is figure out how we can change those habits from good to bad ones. I’m going to take you through a very easy guide that you can follow, along with examples. So, let’s take a look at the first step where you’re identifying the routine.

This is the first step, the easiest bit because this is the activity that you want to cut out. So that might be not exercising, or it might be the habit that you’re eating poor nutrition, or it might be that you’re doing something that you really don’t want to exhibit, so that’s the first step.

The second step is to experiment with the rewards and the third thing we’re going to do is look at the cue, you know, whether it’s time, is it hunger or boredom. So when we’re looking at experimenting with different rewards, you need to understand that rewards satisfy the craving. That’s exactly why we do things, because we want to satisfy the reasons why we’re feeling like that.

So we need to identify what are the different rewards. Can we go for a walk, can we see friends, is it a social craving? Are we hungry, is we have an apple, a shake and some nuts, something healthy in the Paleo style? There are 2 actions that we can do around this. So when the cue comes, when you start to get that feeling that you want to walk and go and grab a donut, or you want to eat something bad, you need to write down the 3 things you are feeling on a piece of paper and put them on your desk. Every single time you need to do this. This is going to help raise awareness while we’re doing it, and help us find the patterns.

The second thing you want to do, is you need to start some alternative solutions. So when the cue comes and you’re feeling hungry for that piece of crap, go for a walk, come back later on and ask did that satisfy your craving. If it didn’t, you need to understand that the process of going for a walk didn’t satisfy your craving, so you’re not craving exercise and environment. What you might be craving is social interaction. So you can try going and seeing friends or giving someone a call for 10 minutes. Then, when you come back to your office, are you still craving what you originally thought would satisfy that craving. Try this process out.

The third thing you want to do (I’ll bring you over here) basically scientists have discovered that any cue is going to fall or you can identify it through 5 different choices.

So what I need you to do is write down on a piece of paper these headings: Location, Time, Emotional State, Other People Around (yes or no), and Immediately Preceding the Action...what do you do.

If you write these down and every single time that you get this craving you need to be able to write these down and identify where was I when it was happening, what time was it, what was my emotional state - run through these 5 questions with yourself and you will start to identify what the actual problem was and how you can do it.

So basically, by this stage we know what the cue is through our 5 choices questionnaire, we know what the routine is because we knew that all along, and we know what the reward is because we’ve done that trial and error.

The last thing that we need to do, is to have a plan. So this is probably the most essential step because with the plan, you know, scientists as they do, have created a buzz word - the “implementation intention”, so when this comes about, what are you going to do. What are the actions you’re going to take when you start to get that craving.

And this is where you need to be strong.

And the thing about this is I don’t expect you to be perfect. Everyone stuffs up. I pressed the snooze button on my alarm this morning. It’s not you know, people have this unrealistic expectation that certain people have this superpower and they never screw up, but we’re all human and I want you to realise that.

What we’re going to do is rewire the habit, because these habits and these routines that we have developed are automatic you know. At the start, in Episode 1 we talked about it being automatic and actually the reason we have habits is because it’s more efficient for our brain and we don’t have to use our brain power on what we perceive as automatic decisions that should just happen.

The thing is, we’re going to start rewiring that, because right now, we’ve got a bad routine inside of our habit loop. This implementation intention, your plan, is going to help you to be a lot more aware, it’s going to help you decide what you’re actually going to do when the crisis occurs, and the last couple of things I want to mention is that you need to, like I said at the start, you need to be realistic – you’re not superman, everyone falls off the wagon.

There was a time last year when I was addicted to these cakes at the Green Refectory in Brunswick – unbelievable cheese cake, best you’ve ever had, and every single day at 3.30 I would eat a piece of this, you know, their full fat, sugar, delicious cakes, but I identified the cues and I found out that what I was actually doing was I wanted a break from work and I wanted to get out, and you know, just have a break from the office environment I was surrounded by for most of my day. And I decided that instead of going up there and eating the Mars Bar cheesecake or the Tim Tam cheesecake that I would just instead, go for a 15 minute walk and have a big glass of water. And what this found was that I was actually dehydrated and that being outside was what I was actually craving.

So once I identified that, I could mitigate it, and there were times when I fell off the wagon and a couple of times that week or over the next couple of weeks I did go for a piece of cake, but I made healthier choices and built it into my plan.

That’s what you need to do, so start thinking about the ways you are using routines in your life, and build plans and actions around how you are going to actually change the things that you want to change and start living the person you want to be and creating the actions that are congruent with the person you want to be.

If you have any questions, jump over to haydenwilson.com.au or you can see previous Episodes at haydenwilson.com.au/lsg.

Learn Share Grow.

If you’ve got any questions, chuck them over there in the comments section or I’ll chat to you all later.

Thanks for joining me. I’m enjoying the journey so far.

Tomorrow I’m going to go through with you, the most important resource you can pick up to learn more about habits, I’m going to share a few different links with you, you can watch a couple of TED talks on influences to follow on Twitter or Instagram, and I also want to provide a couple of worksheets that will help you with a lot of the stuff that we’ve talked about this week around habits, and it’s going to make these things a lot more concrete so, within your life, you can understand why you’re doing specific things and really identify the process and the underlying psychology behind why you’re doing it.

This is an awesome episode for those who would like to learn the hacks and tricks on creating phenoninal results in all area's of their lives simply by changing a couple of smaller ones. This is what a keystone habit can do for you...
Watch along and find out more.

If you want to get all the show notes from yesterday, head over to haydenwilson.com.au/lsg.

Today we are talking about something that I was inadvertently doing and didn’t know that I was doing it. I’m sure there are things in your life that you’re doing as well that you don’t know why you’re doing them but are producing amazing results simply by doing them.

Today I want to explain a little bit about the psychology about why they actually work. This is all about what is called Keystone Habits and if I switch it around to my trusty whiteboard, you’ll find that a keystone habit is pretty much like the head domino.

So once we can work out what the keystone habit is, it knocks over pretty much, a bunch of other dominos and ultimately leads to your success.

Now let’s just give a little example here. As you can see with my amazing graphics, you’ve got the keystone habit of running and I’ve got the Adidas shoe, no copyright intended, and if you have the keystone habit of getting up every morning and exercising, what the studies have shown is an increase in work productivity and promotions, you see people that smoke less, you’ve got a much higher rate of cooperativeness in the workplace, and that’s going to lead to spending less (that’s a little credit card there) which in turn leads to less stress and more healthy wellbeing.

And that’s just one example of exercising in the morning.

Let’s look at a couple of others.

You’ve got families eating dinner together. They always say when you’re growing up that you should eat your family dinner together and there’s no real reason why your parents give it to you, but there actually is a reason – kids are better at homework, they achieve higher grades in their schooling, they have greater emotional control and they have more confidence in social situations or life situations.

The next one I want to explain to you, and I’ve been doing this more recently in the last 12 months and I can tell you now it does actually help. And that is, making your bed first thing in the morning. I’m going to explain why these work in a minute but if you start making your bed in the morning you can increase your work productivity, increase your sense of wellbeing, and also increase your chances of sticking to a budget.

I know that this sounds crazy but this is just how it works.

This is what they’ve found from the studies and the psychology behind the decisions and the habits that we create. But why exactly does this work? Well you can explain it through the concept of what’s called “small wins”.

Small wins are by making the bed in the morning and stringing that together with something else, like you might go for a run, and have this sense of victory throughout the day where you’re adding small win 1 plus small win 2 plus small win 3, and you can start becoming proud of what you’re doing, and you’re going to see changes throughout a bunch of different stuff and other habits in your life. Remember those dominos at the start? Once you get the first one right, the rest just seem to fall over, everything starts to get easier.

So I want to leave you with keystone habits that you can start implementing in your life. I’m sure some of you are already making some of these, or doing some of these habits but I just want to explain a few that might help you.

Something that I’ve been doing is, instead of taking the escalator if I’m at an airport or you know, just at the train station or whatever, or somewhere in public, I will always take the stairs instead of the escalator, no matter what.

And you will find that I have “no matter what” after all these because this is how a good habit is formed.

The other things you might want to start doing is don’t press the snooze button. By pressing the snooze button - I don’t know how many times you might do it. I used to be a chronic snoozer, I’d press it 3, 4 or 5 times, instead of actually, maybe if I needed that extra sleep, just stopping it, giving myself that extra hour.

By pressing the snooze button you’ve got to look at the deeper rooted problem of why you’re actually pressing snooze, did you not get to bed on time, which is our final point. But stop pressing snooze, just get up. Get up first thing, have a shower, have a glass of water, whatever you need to do, and create that small win because other people press snooze, you’re a winner, winners don’t press snooze.

Keep a food journal, no matter what. They’ve found with studies that in the 1960’s they were trying to get these people to lose weight and they couldn’t work out why they couldn’t, and they were trying to change, you know, give them this fancy exercise program and this crazy diet, and trying to change everything within their lives, and they wondered why they just couldn’t lose weight.

But what the research has shown now since 2009 is when they keep a food journal they’re a lot more likely, these participants, there were 1,600 obese people within the study, and what they found is when they started keeping a food journal, not only were they more adherent to eating healthy food, the people would start predicting what they were going to have for dinner and stick to their calories that they’re allowed to eat.

They started making the right decisions before it even happened and that’s why they found these amazing results. Simply by keeping this food journal, the people were a lot more aware of what they were putting into their body.

So that’s a small win you can start implementing if you’re trying to lose weight.

Another one that I’ve got here is walk every single morning. So if you do want to get out, maybe you’re not walking your dog enough, maybe you just need to get that exercise, that morning fresh air, I’m a huge advocate of that, but you need to just, every single day, walk in the morning, the first thing that you do when you get up, if that’s the only thing you have to do for the entire day, then set that as your goal. You must just relentlessly get up, every single day, no matter what, and walk for 20 to 30 minutes.

The last thing that you need to do, one of the last things, and these are just examples, there’s a ton more that you can work out within your life, but another thing that you might like to try is setting a bedtime and sticking to it.

And I was really bad at this for years. I would you know, work til 10, 11 or 12 o’clock at night and then try and get up at 5 in the morning and I was wondering why I was tired and I wasn’t having the productivity that I desired, and I felt weak whenever I stopped, you know, whenever I continued working after a certain amount of time, I’d screw around on Facebook, or Instagram, or whatever, and then once I decided to set myself a bedtime and relentlessly following it again, no matter what, you must stick to it, until it forms itself into the proper habit.

What this does, by going to sleep every day at 9pm which is roughly my bedtime, anytime between 9 and 9.15, yes Grandpa, I know, but what this does is set me up for the next day properly. I get my proper sleep. I’m able to get up early. I’m able to do the work that I want to do on myself early the next day before anything else has even happened. So the domino is by going to bed at night-time, I’ve almost started the next day already because I can get up early, I can do my work, and just continue on from that.

So that’s a small insight into what keystone habits are and small wins, so I hope you can implement some of that stuff into your life. If you need any help, definitely jump over to haydenwilson.com.au and shoot me an email. If you want previous Episodes, haydenwilson.com.au/lsg.

I hope my sound is good. I’ve got a microphone on today so if you can’t hear me, please let me know.

Today we’re going to be talking all about habits. Yesterday we talked about how we can create a habit.

Today we’re going to be talking about how we can change the bad habits and start implementing better ones in their place. So basically, if you missed yesterday’s episode head over to haydenwilson.com.au/lsg and that will get you all the show notes.

Today we’re going to talk about good habits versus bad habits. I’m also going to show you how you can focus purely on the good habits and start making some positive changes in your life.

First of all, there’s good and there’s bad news, so to start with I’m going to go through the bad news. It’s always good to do the bad news first. You can’t remove a habit. Scientifically, it’s just not possible. What we can do is replace that bad habit and insert a good habit.

This happens through a golden rule. (I’ll just switch the camera here to my sweet whiteboard with my awesome handwriting.) It says the golden rule: there’s no removing the bad habits, just replacing them and the way that we do this, (if I grab my texta) is to change a routine.

To change a habit you’ve got the same cue and the same reward, so instead of having the same old routine, which would just get you the same result, we’re going to put in a new routine. So yesterday, we talked about the cue, the routine and the reward, and that was the habit loop, it goes around, and is fuelled by craving.

That’s the habit loop.

You’re going to find that when we start implementing these changes it can work for anything, whether that be OCD, alcoholism, snacking, smoking, checking emails when they go off – there’s all these different things I’m going to help you with right here today.

So let’s take the example of Alcoholics Anonymous. You’re probably aren’t familiar with all these facts, which makes it so interesting.

Alcoholics Anonymous was formed by a guy called Bill Wilson and the reason that there are 12 steps is because there are 12 apostles. It’s not based on anything scientific. He didn’t do research, he wasn’t some scientist. He’s a former drunk and just worked out how the hell to quit this habit of alcoholism and start helping other people do it as well.

It works because it’s got the same cue, the same reward but a new routine, just like we explained. What I want to show you now is an example on my whiteboard, again with my sweet graphics. So, let’s just take alcoholism, you’re got an unhappy little man here, so you’re unhappy, that’s the cue.

The routine is that he goes and drinks. And then you are going to move it down to the reward, which is a happy man. His craving for relief is all sorted. That goes around and around in an unhappy cycle. What we’re going to find if we switch this, the craving for relief can actually be changed by having a new routine, we’ve switched the routine.

The cue, he’s still an unhappy man, he changes and socialises with different people, and then he’s got the reward of being a happy little man. Switch it around, every time he gets unhappy, instead of going out and drinking like the old routine, he’s going to come here, he’s going to hang out with different people – we’re discovered that the craving for relief can be satisfied by hanging out with people, instead of drinking.

This is how we change everything.

So yesterday we explained with a new habit we need to create the craving. When we want to break old habits we’ve got to address the old craving and feed the new craving by inserting the new routine.

So, let’s look at an example.

The biggest challenge is discovering that cue and that reward. So you work out what routine you need to change to get the outcome that you desire. So, what we’re going to find is, let’s say it’s 3pm and the 3pm hits and you get that rush, and you just want to have something to eat, something sugary, a piece of cake – you’ve got the hungers, the 3pm hungers right? – we all know what that’s like. So that’s the cue, the 3pm hit, the time. We need to discover: is this hunger?, is this boredom? or maybe you’re craving some social interaction?

So you’ll find (if I switch around again) – so we’ve got the 3pm hits, the hunger, the boredom, the social. The routine that you’re exhibiting, the behaviour you’re exhibiting at 3pm is snacking. Then the reward is you’ll feel satisfied, you feel socially stimulated and the social need is gone. That’s the reward.

What we need to do is work out what can go here (circling “snacking”) that’s going to make us feel these (circling “satisfy”, “stimulated”, “social need”). What routine can we have that’s going to make us feel satisfied? So once we identify the cue - the cue is 3pm – I’m going to show you later in the week how to change and discover your cues – then we’ll work out what it is that we need to be rewarded by.

So if we work out what you’re actually desiring here. You’ve got a craving for stimulation, social stimulation. Instead of snacking at 3pm, which is a bad habit, start scheduling in at 3 o’clock that you’re going to spend 10 minutes on Facebook. Don’t get stuck in the trap, just plan it into your day, there’s nothing wrong with planning Facebook into your day. Just sit on there for 10 minutes, have a bit of a browse, have a look around, see what people are up to, maybe post a status, whatever. That’s your time that you can do whatever you want. You’ve allocated that time to yourself, don’t feel guilty and you start to incorporate that new routine with the same cue, 3 o’clock, and the same reward, you feel socially stimulated.

If you find that you can satisfy this craving of the 3 o’clock hits, instead of snacking on crap, you find that you are indeed hungry. But instead of using the routine of snacking on something sugary you can change that routine and implement a shake and some nuts or something healthy. Even that routine, that’s still a new routine.

The last thing I want to implement here for you today is that there are 2 things that are really going to supercharge your results.

The first thing is you need to believe that you can achieve it. You need to have a belief that the new routine is going to change you for the good, and we all know what’s good and bad. You know deep down that eating that donut isn’t good for you. The thing is bad habits can still produce a good reward but the routine is a bad routine.

We all know that eating shit is shit for us. So there must be belief and this is why churches work so well and all the other stuff that incorporates belief systems within them. The second thing that will supercharge it is by doing it within a group.

So that is why boot-camps work so well, why accountability works so well. If you can have an accountability partner, a mentorship program, or if you can find a bunch of people that want to get involved and have the same goals as you, put it out there, go on Facebook and say “. . . look guys, I need 4 people. I’m struggling with losing weight, let’s jump in a group and you know, put in $100 each and the first person that reaches their goal takes away the money”. That’s going to create the accountability. You’ve got the belief there. You need to know that you can lose the weight and get in that bikini body. Start putting pictures up of bikinis, or start putting pictures up of six-pack abs on your fridge if you have to. You need to believe that you can get there. Implement that and let me know how you go. If you’ve got any questions head on over to haydenwilson.com.au/lsg .

Any more questions that you want to post right now, you can do it live on the Facebook chat. Otherwise I’ll catch you all tomorrow when we’re talking about something sweet. It’s called Keystone Habits and Small Wins. So any questions, jump over in the chat, otherwise just email me or go to my website – all achievable through haydenwilson.com.au.

Let’s have another look at that whiteboard, just quickly.

For those listening, I’ve taken a screen shot and I’ll put it onto haydenwilson.com.au.